Runing the CS6 trial on a Windows 7 Laptop (x64). I was in Photoshop (64), and noticed that when I held down the spacebar to pan the open image, the hand icon would show but the tool will not work. No matter how many times I click and drag, the image stays still. If I select the MANUALLY select the hand tool it works, but the spacebar shortcut key is non-functional. This issue persists across both the 32 & 64 bit versions of Photoshop.

The only time I can think of when the Space bar won't pan, is when the image is zoomed to fit to screen or smaller, but you say things are OK if you select the Hand tool from the Tools panel. So it is getting into one of those unexplained situations where it is time to try resetting Photoshop's Preferences. Restart Photoshop, and immediately hold down Shift Ctrl Alt

For me, the hand doesn't even show (or work) when I hold the spacebar. This is true in Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign CS6. I'm on a Mac running 10.7.4. This is very dissapointing as this is probably my most used shortcut.

This seems to be a problem with the trackpad drivers for Vista and Win7. You can see this behavior on the Desktop: if you click-drag while holding the spacebar, the cursor doesn't move. Using an external USB mouse works fine - in Photoshop too.

Now, it's embarassing confession time. I did more testing, and discovered the problem persisted across different Adobe Applications. So I started looking for causes of the problem with my system, and noticed that TouchFreeze, a utility to disable the laptop trackpad when typing to prevent the cursor from being jumped around the screen by the palm of your hand, was running (I only turn it on when I'm planning on doing prolonged typing). Lo and behold, as soon as I quit it, the spacebar hand tool shortcut started working again. I use a wireless USB & Mouse, so I'm not sure why the conflict occured. Guess on some small level, the two couldn't get along.

I got worried when I saw lots of similar forum posts like paulburd's, dating back to earlier versions of CS. Hope he and other users manage to find other easy fixes - I feel like I got lucky.

Strangly, mine spontaniously started working shortly after writing my earlier comment. The only thing I did was close several webpages I had open (in Chrome). I can't imagine open web pages would prevent this functionality... but I can't really explain what happened.

The Chrome (and I guess Firefox) problem was due to the Flash plugin. Once I disabled that, I got my space bar back in CS5.5. But now that I'm in CS6, the shortcut is not working no matter what browsers I close (even all of them). I will look into using a wired mouse but I'd really like to have both working together.

Hello: I am using Photoshop CS6 and the spacebar will not function for me either.

I am creating a circle, duplicate the layer, then i select the subtract front shape ... after this i need to be able to use the spacebar to center my subtracting circle so thatt i end up w/a nice border.

I closed firefox but that didn't work and so then I restarted my computer w/out opening FF at all and still the spacebar will not work.

Rather than the hand icon appearing the only thing that changes is that the small black box that shows the height and width adds the x & y demensions.

Does anyone know if i need to turn something on or off in order to enable the spacebar?

I just installed Photoshop CS6 on a powerfull new computer (i7-3370K + 16GB) running Windows 7 x64. I have a Wacom Intuos 5 touch installed also. I am really ANGRY about the space bar pan feature which has been one of my favorite functions in CS5. In CS6 it works about half the time! Sometimes the hand tool never shows up when the spacebar is depressed.

Sometimes the hand tool shows up but there is no panning!!!

To continue what I want to do with a brush, I have to select the hand tool and use it to pan and then switch back to the brush!

Thanks paulburd, that fixed my problem. I have Photoshop CS6 on a Mac and my "spacebar" hand feature dissapeared completely. But then, I closed Chrome and it worked fine! I also run CodeKit, and I have this well linked with Chrome so I'm not sure if that was the issue, but closing Chrome totally did it! Thanks!

I had the same problem in Illustrator CC on OS X Mavericks. Closing Chome and Firefox didn't fix it, but quitting my upgraded install of Parallels Desktop 9 did. Just like that. I didn't even have to restart Illustrator. I'm not sure whether it was Parallels itself, the Windows 7 virtual machine, or the fact I had Windows open in Coherance mode, but there you go. Done.

When I was installed windows 8.1 a spacebar hand tool in Adobe's CC apps was blocked. I was tried everything which i seen on Adobe's forums but nothing was helped me to unblock that tool. I just can switch tool via "h" shortcout but it is quite annoying. I am looking for a professional advice from Adobe.

This issue drove me nuts and none of the suggestions in multiple threads helped (including shutting down all other applications, restarting and resetting preferences). I haven't managed to find a full solution to the problem but I did find a bit of a workaround which may help someone. I'm on Windows 8.1 BTW. If I hold down the Alt key instead of the spacebar the hand icon "grabs" and allows me to drag the canvas around.

I have installed adobe illustrator CS5 and when i open it..tool bar isnt working.. when i click at rectangle/pen tool the sub options on it dont appear though black sign comes.. am confused wat to do?? i have windows 8 as OS.. please help soonest.....thankyou

I discovered that the pan feature that is enabled when depressing the spacebar doesn't really work in certain screen modes. If you press the f key and go to full screen mode you may find that you pan feature will work again.